KΔIJU KID 𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄃

❱ 21+ only, triggering themes & topics will be present ! ❱ essentially just an OC lol . goes by katie and uses she/they ❱ estranged sibling of @antipersonal [my main blog]

✎ mun info: nico | he/him | 30 | EST

𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂 ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ɪ ɢᴏ ᴀɢᴀɪɴ, ᴘʀᴇᴛᴇɴᴅɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ʏᴏᴜ 𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂

He doesn't talk much, not that he ever does. Just sits cross-legged in front of the radiator in her trailer, steam curling from his skin as the water dries. Katie crouches behind him with a towel, combing through his hair in slow, clumsy strokes.

"You're a bad swimmer," they say, not unkindly. "Woulda thought you got enough practice by now."

He hums-- a low, sleepy sound.

Katie studies the pulse at his throat, the curve of his shoulders under their borrowed shirt, how perfectly, painfully normal he looks. Every time he comes back, she expects to see something left over -- a scaled ridge, a milky white film across his eyes-- but there's nothing. Todd is whole again. Intact. When Katie stretches their hands, the webbing between their fingers catches the light, faint and translucent. Not quite skin anymore. The serum has been kind to them, so far.

He sneezes suddenly, sharp and human. Katie startles, but their nose crinkles in amusement when they toss the towel around his neck. "You're a mess, dude," they tell him.

Todd blinks up at them, bleary and still far from the surface of himself. There's something childlike about it, something disarming, and Katie feels a strange, irrational guilt bloom in their chest.

"I know," he murmurs.

They sit together a while, saying nothing. Fog presses against the window, and somewhere beyond it, the lake stirs.

He's sitting on the edge of the counter when he says it.

"Can you check?"

Katie looks up from their phone.

"That I'm still--" He gestures vaguely, eyes skittering away from theirs. "You know. Me."

Katie doesn't sigh. Just closes the screen and crosses the short distance between them, tucks a greasy pink strand behind one ear. The radiator hums, turning the damp air thick and metallic.

"All right," they say. "Hold still, big guy."

She starts with his hands. Five fingers. Nails bitten to the quick. She turns them over, presses the tendons in his wrist with her thumbnail until he flinches. His skin is clammy, but still human. Still fragile.

Then his face. They tilt it toward the light, study the tiredness in his doe eyes, the split in his eyebrow that never healed right. He blinks at them, uneasy but trusting.

(He isn't unattractive, Katie thinks, not for the first time. If he were a girl, and she was a boy, and everything about their lives wasn't so deeply, irreparably wrong, maybe she'd do more than think. But it's late, and neither of them have enough energy left to play pretend.)

"Teeth?" he asks.

Katie tilts her head, tired voice like wet gravel. "Weirdo. Open up."

He obeys. They catch his chin, pull his mouth open, run their thumb over the blunt edges of his teeth with clinical precision. The contact feels strangely grounding, the way a pulse beneath your finger reminds both parties they're still alive. Todd's breath is warm where it ghosts across their wrist. He exhales when they let go, unspooling just a little.

Still, the paranoia lingers in his eyes.

Katie reaches into their pocket.

The tiny folding blade clicks open. They take his hand again, turn it palm-up. A warning would only make him flinch, so they don't give him one. It's a careful, practiced motion, just a little nick.

A bead of unremarkable red wells up. Todd stares at it like he's afraid when he blinks it'll disappear.

Katie sweeps a thumb over the cut and licks it, shrugging idly.

The relief that washes over him is quiet but total-- his shoulders droop, and he looks oddly young, like the fear that had aged him had been peeled back.

They wipe their hand on their shirt, fish a crumpled bandage from their pocket, presses the cheap adhesive into place. Todd's hand lingers and she's struck by how small it looks, curled into her palm.

Katie hasn't touched another person in weeks-- nothing that wasn't transactional, brief, forgettable, violent-- but here they are. You can’t see a wild thing until it decides to trust you.

Then, with an exhale that could either be patience or fatigue, they ruffle his hair roughly-- it's getting long nowadays, sticking to his forehead as it dries. A gesture that tries to say: You're okay. You're still you. I'm still me.

The radiator hums. The run-down trailer holds a little while longer.

[ Next time he wakes up, her hair brushes her shoulders. He knows it used to be shorter --much shorter-- but she insists it's only been a few days. Todd knows better. They can't live in the city, can't live anywhere, not when he's legally dead and can't risk showing his face. He wonders if that's the reason she looks so sick. ]

He keeps time by visits. One each day. Sometimes the moon crosses overhead three, four times before he sees her-- he thrashes in the water angrily when she returns, tail cracking against the dock, only settling when she fearfully raises her voice.

[ He remembers the other Walker sometimes. West Point, same room, same cheap mattress smell. They weren't friends, not really, just two weird and quiet boys shoved together in the same space. He knows better than to bring it up-- Katie's jaw goes tight at the name, and besides, Todd's memory is already swiss-cheesed to shit. Most things before the procedure are missing anyway. ]

The dock creaks. Her shadow falls over the water as she tosses a hefty slab of frozen salmon into the water, bigger than usual. His tail stirs the weeds when he circles up, and KATIE laughs when he snaps up the fish in one bite. Laughing is a good noise. When she swims he rolls beside her, big and clumsy, careful not to break her with the sweep of his tail.

[ One day, there's a syringe on the counter. He doesn't ask-- he's been around needles enough to mind his own business. Katie's hands shake when she hurriedly knocks it into a drawer, not enough coffee in the world to steady them. She tells him it's nothing. He nods and pretends not to notice the glow in her red-rimmed eyes. ]

KATIE kneels at the edge of the dock, straps the tourniquet around his forelimb. The needle slides in. She smells nervous, though there's no reason to be-- he'd only snapped at her the first time, when the fear had made him foolish. Now he just grumbles under the water as she speaks to him softly, lets her rest her cool hand on the smooth scales of his neck.

[ Todd doesn't like mirrors. He doesn't like the cold. He doesn't like the fact that he can't walk into the pharmacy and ask for the little orange bottles that once kept the worst days from tearing him apart. He used to stockpile everything: cans, batteries, extra ammo. Now he has nothing but a damp couch and Katie's patience, starting to thin just like the color in their face. ]

Today she's folded in on herself, shoulders jerking like she can't get air. (Fish do that sometimes-- gasp in the mud, open and close their mouths until they stop moving. Todd doesn't want her to stop moving.) He rises, pushes his snout against her knees. No change. He nips at her leg, sulks beneath the weeds when she kicks at him. When KATIE finally lifts her head the noise is louder, ragged and painful. Her face is already wet-- he tests it with a clumsy swipe of his forked tongue as she scolds him. (Salt. Strange. The pond doesn't taste like that, does it?) He does the only thing he knows. Takes the edge of her shirt gently in his teeth, slides backward off the dock. She follows without resistance, arms limp around his neck, folding into the pull. The water closes over them both. Here, at least, she won't run out of air.

[ The choice is simple in the end. As a man he is hungry, paranoid, unmedicated, a burden. As a monster, well-- Seattle Times said fish prices were going down this year, didya hear? ]

The pond is warm this time of year. He circles KATIE when she visits, nips at her ankles to make her laugh. Listens to the smooth lilt of her good sounds, the ones that mean nothing. This world is smaller, and kinder. He stays. He doesn't wake again.